


Reunion

by yarroway



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Episode: s01e15 Mob Rules, Episode: s07e23 Moving On, Gen, Male Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 02:32:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3102227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yarroway/pseuds/yarroway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people belong together</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reunion

Bill’s a busy guy these days, an important guy. He knows it and everyone around him knows it too, but when _that_ phone rings, he stops what he’s doing.

“Take a break,” he says to his guys, and they do.

“Mr. Arnello,” a strange man’s voice says. “My name is Dr. James Wilson. A few years back, a friend of mine helped out your brother.”

“Don’t talk about my brother,” Bill says reflexively. He knows what’s coming now, a plea for a favor. A play to his generosity. The guy’s got to be stupid or desperate to call him. Either way the answer is no.

“His name is Dr. House.”

“And?” Bill owes House, he knows that. Owes him big. But he doesn’t owe this Wilson guy anything.

“And he’s in Mexico. He needs a favor.”

“Then he should ask me himself.”

“He can’t,” Wilson says, and there’s the desperation Bill’s been listening for. “They found him unconscious on the beach. His liver is failing. They called me.”

Wilson rattles off a bunch of medical crap that Bill doesn’t understand and doesn’t care about. Bill lets him talk while he thinks it over. He can set it up, no problem. For the guy who helped Joey and kept his family’s honor intact he can get a hundred livers.

“No. Thank you, but no,” Wilson tells him. Black market organs aren’t reliable, he says. They aren’t screened for diseases. Bill figures the guy’s a pansy about what happens to the donors too, but at least he’s polite enough not to say so.

“So what do you want me to do?” Bill asks.

“I want a surgeon, a good one. Get him to fly with me to Mexico, and transplant a lobe of my liver into House. We’ll need someplace to do the operation, one where they don’t ask too many questions. If—if that’s more than you owe House, I have money. I can pay, or take care of any extra costs.”

Bill frowns. Honor and reputation have no price. Dr. House took care of Joey, and Bill will take care of Dr. House. This time.

“Money is not an issue,” he assures Wilson. “But this cancels the debt. I don’t owe House anymore after this.”

“I’ll make sure he knows,” Wilson says.

“You do that,” Bill says, real low. This guy needs to understand, Bill’s not used to paying his debts this way. He’s not a fool and he’s no one’s patsy. There’s a gratifying pause. Wilson swallows audibly. It’s good that he’s afraid. Bill isn’t Wilson’s friend. He isn‘t House’s friend. He’s a business man, and his business is easier if everyone understands that up front.

“Why don’t you just go down there and do this legit?” Bill wonders, because if Wilson has money—and he’d better, if he’s offering it to Bill like that—then he can afford all this. So why would he decide to put himself in the hands of a filthy backstreet clinic and not a regular hospital?

“Most legitimate hospitals would refuse me as a donor and House as a transplant patient.”

That’s an interesting answer.

Bill knows all about House’s drug problem, of course, but he wonders why Wilson would be rejected as a donor. Wilson explains that he donated to someone else a year ago, and hospitals don’t like return customers. Too risky.

Bill appreciates the kind of loyalty that has Wilson running south to give away part of himself. He wonders if the men might be related, cousins maybe, and imagines explaining to his own aunt that he’d let Tony, her lousy cokehead, serial adulterer, bastard of a son, die on vacation in Mexico. He wishes he had a cousin like Wilson instead of one like Tony, who’d party on Bill’s deathbed, sell his corpse, and still get to Mass on time the next day.

“Just one more thing, Mr. Arnello,” Wilson says. “If—if this goes badly, tell him what happened. That I…” The voice catches, continues with effort. “Tell him…”

_That I died for him_ , Wilson means. Yeah, that’s not a message Bill is going to give anyone. “Tell him yourself, and be in your office at seven tonight. Someone will pick you up there.”

He hangs up the phone. He makes the arrangements and puts it out of his mind. Ten minutes later he’s hip deep in an accounting mess when the office door opens and Tony saunters in He’s talking too fast and too loud, and Bill shuttles him off to keep him busy until he comes down. Bill closes his eyes and sighs.

He misses Joey.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks: go to Srsly_yes for beta duty. All errors remain my own.


End file.
